Looking in from the Outside – a Retiree’s View

It has been three years now since I retired as the data analyst of the Alaska Cancer Registry in Anchorage. It was a hard decision to make, having been in that position for nearly 25 years and totally loving my job. I had great coworkers and had the privilege of working with amazingly talented colleagues in the NAACCR community from all over the United States and Canada. But there were several factors that all came together for me about the same time. First and most important was that I had reached the official retirement age with benefits for the state of Alaska government. Another consideration was that technology was changing quickly and I felt that the registry would benefit from a younger person with a lot of computer experience who hadn’t spent decades with older software systems. I felt very comfortable with these older systems and they did everything I needed them to do, but they may not necessarily be the best ones anymore for the current technology environment. Other considerations were related to travel. My wife and I had enjoyed camping in Alaska in our motorhome over the previous 25 years and we decided we wanted to branch out to the “Lower 48” and start visiting national parks. But driving a motorhome from Anchorage to the Canadian border with the northwestern states takes an entire week just going one way, putting a vacation like that (potentially 5-7 weeks) out of our reach until we had more time after retirement. Also, we had starting going on cruises almost once a year for about the previous 10 years and we decided we wanted to start going on longer ones and include hotel stays for several days before the cruise started. Again, something that would turn out to be about a 3-week vacation and seemed difficult to do while I was still working.

So, I took the leap into retirement. But I didn’t just leave and wave goodbye. I loved my registry and my coworkers and wanted them to continue to succeed. I gave this a lot of thought and came up with a succession plan. I even wrote an article about a succession planning model that I developed and was published in the NAACCR Narrative back in April 2023. I called it the “Three-Legged Stool” model and it consisted of these elements: (1) Give as much advanced notice of your retirement to your supervisor as possible (the seat), (2) document all tasks in great detail (first leg), (3) hire your successor before employment separation so there is a training overlap (second leg), and (4) train your coworkers to train your replacement if there isn’t going to be much or any overlap between you and your successor (third leg). This model worked well in my case.

I also decided to sign up as a registry “volunteer.” This is not the same as a consultant as it is an unpaid position. I got to keep my old email account with many years of archived conversations and attachments. During the first year, I got a lot of questions via email and text. I was happy to help out, often coming into the office (I only live six miles away). My registry also has a tradition of holding periodic pot luck lunches and they were gracious enough to extend invitations to me, which I usually accepted unless I was traveling.

During the second year, the questions became fewer and fewer, and during the third year, they all but stopped. I was very proud of them when they told me they had once again attained NAACCR Gold Certification for the annual Call For Data. I felt that my succession planning was eventually successful. For those of you who are considering retirement or are close to it, I hope you will take a similar approach to help your registry succeed as you plan for your successor and then again after retirement while you are looking in from the outside.